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Stutterer doesn’t look or feel like a first film. Its confident direction, from bold voiceover to distinct visual style, belies the fact that it was director Benjamin Cleary‘s first time behind the camera.

Fortunately, these attributes were not lost on the Academy. This year, the short film Cleary subletted his apartment to fund won an Oscar for Best Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards.(Via No Film School)

(Spoilers ahead) What an amazingly emotional film. You can feel the frustration as his inner voice begs to break the chains from its captor. Come to find out what holds him captive is what eventually will set him free. Meeting El and finding out their both just two pieces of a puzzle sends a wave of relief rushing over him that I don’t think I will ever feel. Working in a job that makes him press letters, being unable to help someone in distress, and trying spit a bit a philosophy to a friend are all things that torture his soul. You can see it in his eyes. Meeting El, someone who with he can finally communicate with, is the perfect ending to this wonderful story. Bravo, Mr. Cleary. I look forward to more from you.

Never, ever, in my Star Wars fandom did I think i would root this hard for the Empire to succeed. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Vader and his crew, but this is the first time I was actively pushing for the TIE Fighters to destroy the Rebel scum, and here’s why. First off, This is BEAUTIFULLY drawn and animated. I really can’t say enough good things about it. Reminds me of my favorite animated TV of all time, Gundam Wing. So hats off to Paul Johnson for making a stunning Star Wars fan-film. Now onto why I was rooting for R2-D2 to get his head blown off. The score was a perfect blend of evil and badass. The type of score that makes me want to so donuts in an empty parking lot while smoking a cigar. It was THAT good. It carried a certain emotional that had me relate to these badass Tie pilots as they swarmed out of their mothership. Which brings me to my favorite part of this short, The pilots themselves. Never in a Star Wars film do you get to see the faces of the enemy as they fly their fighters. This was so you could’t relate to them; it didn’t matter hat they looked liked, all that mattered was that they were the enemy and they needed to die! In that light this short turned that notion on its head! I was pleasantly surprised to see the blending of helmets and faces throughout this film. It made for a very unique aspect of the classic “dogfight” and I loved it. Kudos to all who were involved with this animated short, there are a lot of people in film industry that could learn from this. Let’s pray someone takes notice and gives this a full run of episodes.

Not sure how to explain it, but I feel like iv’e been to that diner before, not literally of course. I can almost feel this environment, one created after long nights of drinking at the bar. Iv’e seen all these characters before (without the accents of course). I came across this on StumbleUpon and it’s worth a watch.